Protoshock
by Captiosus
Summary: The Ultimate Hunter is dead, slain by his hand, and the clock on the nuke is ticking. However, instead of being reduced to a puddle by the fury of the atom, it sends him to a dystopian hell at the bottom of the sea. In otherwords, another day at the office for Mercer. Rated T for swearing, some gore.
1. Blast to the past

Greetings and Salutations dear readers!

This was a plotbunny that struck without warning while i was busy looking through Bioshock crossovers, and when i gave it some thought, i realized it works _very_ well. Think about it for a sec: Alex Mercer is, in a nutshell, a sentient virus, one that can change his DNA at will. Now, take that, and throw it into the underwater hell known as Rapture with access to _plenty _of fresh DNA, not to mention all of the ADAM and various genetic tools and tweaks available. If one ignores the fact its underneath several hundred meters of the one thing Blacklight does not like at all, Rapture is Mercer's ultimate playground.

Now, having only really played Bioshock 1, this story will be centered around it, and i shall use this opportunity to lay down some rules i will have to follow when writing:

-Mercer cannot get plasmids by consuming a splicer due to the corrupting effects of ADAM on DNA. Once DNA has been altered in a target, as far as blacklight is concerned, its junk DNA.

-Mercer CAN splice up, but he has the same limits as the Jack in terms of what can be active (6 of everything). The Difference between them though is that Mercer can switch out plasmids and tonics on the fly VS having to go to a Gene bank. It takes him a few moments to switch though.

-Mercer CAN get EVE when consuming a splicer, however the amount is small compared to what an EVE hypo delivers.

-Mercer cannot consume Big Daddies, but he can curbstomp them (Hunters have more sheer power, not to mention are much faster)

-No Jack Ryan, as Mercer will literally be taking his place, with a few twists

-He can combine Blacklight's abilities with Plasmids to create terrifyingly powerful attacks, at the cost of Biomass and an increased drain on EVE reserves (Example: Hammerfist + Incinerate! = Firehammers. Devastating against large numbers of splicers. An example involving a Devastator: Electrobolt + Tendril Barrage = Thunder Barrage. Stuns everything in range before shredding them with razor sharp tendrils; burns through ALL of Mercer's EVE as consequence. I'll cook up more later)

-He cannot generate EVE or ADAM

Anyways, with that out of the way, I present unto you:

**Protoshock**

Flight Deck of the USS Reagan

It was done.

The Ultimate Hunter, the bastard child of Greene, the Parasite, and his own DNA, was dead, what's left of its corpse cooling on the non-skid of the deck. Turns out, the Ultimate Hunter was a bit more palatable to the walking virus compared to a normal Hunter.

Of course, had he known who he'd get to tag along inside his wonderful little world of insanity after the consumption, he would have never done it.

_-Oh Great, first I get chomped on by that big pink bastard, and now I get to spend the rest of my days stuck inside your head.-_

"Oh christ you have got to be kidding," Mercer groaned.

-_Im not happy about it either, but right now we have bigger problems,_- Cross said.

"Yeah, its got a yield of three hundred kilotons and," Mercer leaned down to look at the side of the nuclear bomb. "Has about ten minutes left on the clock."

_-Well get a move on then. As much as I would enjoy seeing you get vaporized, I would prefer it if it didn't include several million casualties as collateral.-_

Mercer rolled his eyes before chaining the nuke to the bottom of a nearby Blackhawk helicopter, while at the same time diverting a cluster of tendrils to get the engines started. Within two minutes the rotors of the helicopter were spinning, and Mercer wasted no time in getting in and turning the vehicle seaward.

As the Blackhawk sped out to sea, Cross chose that moment to speak with Mercer inside his own head.

_-You know, i never did get a chance to apologize to you after the attack in the Hive.-_

Mercer simply snorted. _-Save the apologies for later. I still have a nuke to drop in the Atlantic, a city to purge of Redlight, and a few more asshole Blackwatch commanders to curbstomp.-_

It didnt take long for Mercer to pilot the Blackhawk to minimum safe distance, the line in the Atlantic Ocean where he'd be able to safely drop the nuke and still have a snowball's chance in hell of making it out alive while minimizing casualties.

_-Move your ass Mercer you only have 3 minutes left on the clock!- _Cross roared inside his head.

Mercer replied by slamming his Blade through the chain loop passing through the troop bay, cutting it and the nuke free to plummet into the chilly waters below.

Almost as soon as the bomb was in freefall Mercer tilted the aircraft forward, speeding away from the impending atomic fireball.

_-Fly faster damnit! I am not in the mood to be vaporized today!-_ Cross said.

Mercer uttered a curse under his breath. The helicopter was flying at its maximum airspeed and they still weren't outside the blast zone.

-_How much time?- _The virus asked.

-_Not enough- _was the response.

The last thought to pass through Mercer's head before the overpressure wave crushed the helicopter was that he never got the chance to see Dana one more time.

-Protoshock-

When Mercer came to, it was under several meters of very cold seawater. Blacklight, being a virus that had a very strong dislike of water, immediately protested, causing what remaining biomass that constituted his form to squirm.

Mercer immediately made for the surface, noting that there was an _awful_ lot of burning debris up there. What that burning debris was made itself clear as an entire airplane fuselage minus the tail came thundering by him, the internals still cracking with electricity.

A turbine disk violently whizzed by underwater, nearly turning him into mincemeat. Mercer let loose a strangled curse before pushing for the surface.

Towering sheets of flame greeted him there, along with more debris and the slowly sinking tail of the airplane he apparenly found himself near. _-Wait, where's the damn helicopter?- _He thought to himself.

A shriek of twisting metal immediately followed by a fireball in the distance answered his question.

Ignoring the fact that his previous ride is now rapidly sinking towards the bottom of the Atlantic in favor of getting out of the blasted water, Mercer began swimming forward between the flames. Ahead of him was a rather tall tower, nothing on par with what New York had, but still respectably high nonetheless. This monolith was relatively unadorned except for the steady white light at the top. Odd that a lighthouse didn't have a regular pulsing pattern to it.

He pushed that thought aside when he saw the stairs next to the tower's base, leading up and out of the water onto dry land, what little there was.

With a shudder Zeus pulled himself out of the ocean, the Blacklight virus causing his biomass to ripple in an effort to shed the water that still clung to him. After taking a moment to get his bearings, he saw that the steps made a left, presumably to some sort of door on the tower. What really got his attention though was the body, still alive if his sense of smell had anything to say. Not wanting to waste a meal and not particularly caring about who this man was, Mercer formed his trusty blade and slammed it into the man's gut, feeling a warm wave of contentment ripple through him as Blacklight feasted on fresh biomass.

-_You know you _could_ have spared him.-_ Cross commented.

-_I was hungry, and unfortunately for him, Jack i think his name was, he was a convenient meal, if a bit soggy.-_

-_You are one fucked up individual do you know that?-_

Mercer smirked slightly, an expression that would have sent lesser men running in terror from him. Blacklight finished consuming the meal, and he felt strength flood his limbs as much needed biomass was burned repairing the damage the bomb wrought. All things considered, he was in good shape after getting hit by a supersonic thirty thousand degree wall of burning air. Just like a thermobaric tank, only bigger. Much bigger.

Mercer took the opportunity to go through the memories of his latest meal and almost instantly knew something was off. Almost like the memories were-

_-Fabricated.-_ Cross muttered. -_Someone's been fucking around with this poor bastard's head.-_

-_Not just his head. His DNA has been altered as well.-_ Mercer added, more to himself rather than the disembodied Cross.

-_What kind of alterations are we talking about? Light gene therapy? Or creating another psychotic shapeshifting bastard like you?-_ Cross asked.

-_Vastly accelerated pre-pubescent aging, some strength and reflex enhancers... its almost as if someone needed a quick n dirty soldier without having to run him through training or for that matter waiting for him to grow up. Not even Blackwatch would go this far, and both of us know just how far they went, both with you and the D-Codes.-_

Mercer felt Cross start thinking and thinking hard. _-Alright, if Blackwatch didn't do this... then who did?-_

-_I'm not sure. Gentek might have been able to pull it off but it would have required more resources than what they dumped into Redlight. And these memories... wait that cant be right.-_ Mercer frowned at the tidbit of info that cropped up.

-_Well, it seems we have been blasted back into the '60s, if that's even possible.-_

Mercer merely growled under his breath. This complicated things.

A faint roll of thunder drew his attention, and he turned to see a rapidly approaching squall line a hundred miles out and closing fast. Already the wind was picking up, and there were faint but massive forks of lightning flashing amongst the clouds. Alex had already gotten soaked once in the crash, and we wasn't looking forward to it again.

Taking the only other path available to him, Mercer walked up the steps at the base of the tower to what appeared to be an elaborate bronze door. Said door opened at his touch, swinging wide to admit him into the tower's black depths.

Almost as soon as he crossed the threshold, the doors slammed shut, prompting him to shift his right arm into a blade while at the same time turning on thermal vision so he could see better. This turned out to be unnecessary, as the lights began to snap on, lighting up the room, and a massive statue of a man inside it.

_-Look familiar?-_ Mercer asked.

-_Nope. Looks rich though, and full of himself.-_ came the response.

The statue held a bright red banner in its hands, with the words "No gods or kings, only Man." printed on it. A plaque embedded in the stone banister read: "In what country is there a place for people like me? -Andrew Ryan"

-_Yep, definitely full of himself. Now the question is: Why is there a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean with the statue of a self important rich fuck on the inside?- _Cross wondered.

-_Hell if I know. Looks like there's another set of steps going down further. Maybe there's some useful information further down.-_

Mercer cautiously walked down the stairs underneath the massive statue of what he assumed was Andrew Ryan, claws still out. As he proceeded more lights snapped on, as well as some music as a hidden phonograph began playing. Yet more lights snapped on, revealing a small bathysphere floating in a pool of water. Said bathysphere was relatively unadorned outside, while the inside had a pair of plush velvet benches, wood floors, and a small activation lever on a pedestal.

As he reached out to grab the lever, Cross voiced his concern.

-_Are you sure you want to pull that lever? Who knows here the hell this thing is going to take us, or what we'll find when we get there.-_

Mercer merely rolled his eyes. -_Come now, there's precious little that will be a threat to me. If worst comes to worst I can slaughter my way back out.-_

Cross remained unconvinced, but didn't voice his concerns any further, so without further ado Mercer gave the lever a hearty tug.

Immediately the door to the bathysphere slammed shut, and the vessel began a swift descent into the ocean beneath it. Within seconds the pod had passed 20 fathoms and showed no signs of slowing down.

Mercer took the opportunity to sit down and just _rest_ for a moment, only to have his thoughts interrupted by a screen and projector that had popped up through the deck of the sub.

The first thing that the screen showed was a black and white ad for something called Incinerate, depicting a man lighting a woman's cigarette with a flame springing from his fingertip. -_Damn. Might have to pay 'Ryan Industries' a visit to get this so called plasmid.-_

The ad faded away to reveal the visage of Andrew Ryan, who began speaking.

"_I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?"_

"_No says the man in Washington, it belongs to the poor._

"_No says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God."_

"_No says the man in Moscow it belongs to everyone."_

"_I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose: the _impossible._ I chose..."_

The screen fell away, and for the first time in his life, Alex Mercer was struck dumb in awe. "Holy shit." He managed to croak out.

"_Rapture."_

A vast underwater city spread out before him, a metropolis that would put New York city to shame in sheer size and grandeur, and that was saying something. Skyscrapers thousands of feet tall speared forth from the sea floor, with glass tubes connecting them to each other and to smaller buildings scattered around the area. Many of the buildings had neon signs outside them, advertising hundreds of different things. Sea life, from squid to fish to a massive blue whale swam between the gaps of the buildings.

"_A city, where the artist would not fear the censor, the scientist not bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small. And by the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."_

"Okay," Merer breathed. "I am legitimately impressed." If Cross still had his body, he would have nodded. Something like this, while not outright impossible, would be horrendously expensive. And yet here it was.

Their contemplation of the city surrounding him was cut short as the emergency radio went active.

"_...Looks like some sort of plane crash."_

"_We're in the middle of the ocean, how the hell could it come down out here?"_

"_I dunno, but you'd better get over there, and be quick about it. The sploicers are comin'."_

"_Oh you gotta be kidding me."_

"_There's a bathysphere on the way down. That means _we _got company. So get a move on and greet the new arrivals before the sploicers get to them."_

Mercer grinned. This might end up being _oh_ so much fun.

A/N: Well? What do ya think? Leave a review, and you can expect the next chapter shortly. And yes, I know I mis-spelled splicers, but spelling it like that while Atlas is talking helps bring out the accent a bit.


	2. Welcome to Hell, also known as Rapture

Chapter 2: Welcome to Hell, also known as Rapture

Thanks for everyone who reviewed, knew this one would work out well.

Now, on with the story!

_"Just one more minute... The 'sphere! The 'sphere's coming up now!"_

_"Johnny, the whole damn security systems banging off all over, GET A MOVE ON!"_

_-Well, looks like we got ourselves a greeting committee.- _Cross dryly commented.

_-No shit.-_

As the bathysphere breached the moon pool, Mercer was greeted with the sight of two people outside the pod, one apparently this "Johnny" sent to greet them. The other person was hard to see, and the water on the pod rendered thermal vision useless. The one thing Mercer _did _see was that this second person carried a set of massive hooks, each one radiating heat. Mercer immediately knew this second person was a hostile.

This was immediately confirmed when she gutted Johnny like a fish, ripping his entrails out in a brutal finisher that would make any Hunter pink with envy.

-_Poor bastard.-_

Mercer's response died on his mental lips when a flash of light gave him a very good look at the _thing_ that just killed the man outside the pod.

It was ugly, _very_ ugly, and the only thing Mercer could compare it to was the infection. A massive bloody tumor grew off the right side of the thing's face, and it was covered from head to toe in no small amount of blood.

The creature looked through the glass back at him, and said in a throaty rasp, **"Is it someone new?"**

"I don't know, how about you open up the pod so I can show you personally." Mercer said.

The creature reared back as if Mercer's words were like a slap to the face. **"Oh ho! The new little fish has a mouth on him! Perhaps what he needs is a lesson on how WE DO THINGS AROUND HERE!"** With a scream the creature leapt up onto the pod and began trying to rip the top off.

Mercer cursed, before shifting his right hand into a Hammerfist and slamming it into the glass door with all the power of a semi. The door exploded off its hinges, and Mercer rushed out of the pod, only to immediately be attacked by the thing. A pair of white hot lines carved themselves into his back, causing Mercer to roar in pain before retaliating with a Hammerfist to the face of his attacker. Much to his surprise, the thing survived the hit and gave a deep chuckle.

**"Oh, so the little fish has some **_**teeth**_** now does he? That's okay, I have some too." **A pair of flying red hooks streaked back towards him, forcing him to pull up his shield. Each one smashed into the dense barrier of biomass, driving him back several steps. Mercer snarled before shifting to Whipfist and sending the spiked tendril rocketing towards his foe.

The splicer, not expecting this, shrieked with surprise before dodging the attack and fleeing the area, screaming the entire way.

"GET BACK HERE ASSHOLE!" Mercer roared to the fleeing creature, but got no response back other than a few falling chunks of debris.

-_Ok what the fuck was that?-_ Cross shouted.

-_Hell if I know, but if I meet it again I intend on eating it to find out.-_

Mercer could almost feel Cross grimace at that. -_You are one _twisted_ fuck.-_

Before Mercer could start arguing with the disembodied Blackwatch commander in his head, the emergency radio still inside the now wrecked bathysphere gave a loud burst of static before one of the voices that was speaking earlier came through.

_"'ello? Is anyone still alive down there?"_

Mercer walked back to the pod and grabbed the radio. "Yeah, I'm here."

_"Oh thank god. I thought that splicer had gotten to ya. I don't know how you survived that plane crash, but I've never been one to question Providence. I'm Atlas, and I aim to keep you alive. Now keep on moving, we're gonna have to get you to higher ground."_

"Well, cant argue with that."

Mercer walked out past the gangplank to where a series of huge windows were opening up, revealing the city outside, massive monoliths visible in the murky water.

_"We're gonna draw her out of hiding, but you're gonna have to trust me."_ Mercer snorted at this.

_"Look kid, I don't want to have to send someone else down there to clean the mess off the walls when she's done with you. Now, would you kindly get a move on?"_

Mercer sighed, only to have Cross interrupt. _-Ok, at least I've managed to figure out what one of the tweaks against that man's mind was. Those words, 'would you kindly' were some kind of keyphrase, apparently to trigger complete and total obedience for the specified task. As Jack is now dead, the keyphrase has been rendered inert. I would suggest you 'comply' with them just in case this 'Atlas' fellow proves to be the kind of person to stab you in the back.-_

Mercer sighed again. Then again maybe this wouldn't be so fun.

He took a moment to look around the room he was in, and noted the entire place was an advanced state of decay. Blood, watermarks, and all sorts of damage painted the walls, while the floor was covered in debris and the occasional corpse. Many of the lights were out, and what lights were on merely flickered.

-_Jesus, what the hell happened here? It looks almost as if a war happened.- _Cross muttered. Mercer had to agree, if the entryway looked like this, then either this area was rarely if ever used, or far more likely, Cross' theory of some sort of war happening was correct and the entire city was in a similar state. Almost like New York only without the water.

As he walked up the nearby steps, a small shower of dust and debris fell from the ceiling.

**"I'll wrap you in a sheet..."** the female splicer purred from somewhere in the room.

Mercer readied his whipfist, before proceeding slowly forward.

He reached a collapsed column in the middle of the floor, and the splicer took that moment to appear with a shriek. Mercer didn't waste time lashing out with the black tendril, and grappled onto the splicer before wrenching it back towards him. The splicer wasn't expecting this, and thus found itself recipient to a face full of Musclemass as she came within range of Mercer's fists. The enhanced fist connected, and a loud crunch sounded as the splicer's jaw shattered. Not done yet, Mercer grabbed it by the waist, jumped up into the air, and piledrove it into the wooden deck with a sickening crunch.

Amazingly enough the splicer was still alive, and it took a moment to re-align its head with its neck, before giving a throaty chuckle. **"This little fish definitely has some teeth to it. You'll do well down here in the dark methinks. Now, where were we?"**

_"How about a faceful of lead you bitch?!" _Atlas shouted through the radio. A spotlight snapped on with a whirr of hidden alarms, and some sort of drone came speeding out of nowhere, spraying bullets at the splicer. It gave a howl of pain before running up the nearby wall almost like a spider, a spray of lead following it.

"OH NO YOU DONT!" Alex roared. "GET BACK HERE SO I CAN POUND YOUR FUCKING SKULL IN!"

But it was too late, the spider splicer had fled, and the drone gave a sad whistle before flying off. Mercer gave a growl of frustration before slamming his fist into the nearby wall, cracking it.

_"You alright boyo? Spider splicers are a nasty piece of work. Don't worry, I'll have the security bot hunt it down and give it a right thrashing. Now, would you... what the _bloody_ hell is that on your right hand?" _Atlas asked.

"Oh this?" Mercer raised the whipfist towards the camera. "Its called Whipfist. Great for grabbing anything moving too fast for its own good, or grappling onto walls, vehicles, basically anything the barbs can dig into. Nice and sharp too."

_"I would ask how you got such a thing, but for now if it'll keep you alive, more power to you. Believe me, you'll need it down here."_ Atlas said.

"Okay now what?"

_"The entryway to the docks is blocked off by some debris. Think you can break through it?"_

"Not a problem."

Mercer switched to Musclemass and slammed one of his fists into the rubble, causing it to crumble away and freeing a path towards a set of rather dilapidated looking stairs. He managed to make it halfway up the stairs before he was attacked again, this time with a burning couch.

Dodging the flaming sofa, Mercer dashed up the stairs and was immediately set upon by three different splicers, all wielding either a piece of pipe, a wrench, or the mother of all maglites. The one with a pipe gave a roar of rage and swung his weapon towards Mercer, who simply grabbed it and smashed it back into the owners face. Not wasting any time, he used his Musclemass'ed fists to block both swings at the same time, before lashing out with a foot against the maglite splicer, sending it careening towards the wall. The other one, having seen the fate of its two companions, decided discretion was better against fighting this new monster, but Mercer wouldn't have it. He ripped the wrench out the splicer's grip and smashed its ruin of a jaw clean off, before plunging his fist into the splicer's gut and letting the tendrils feast on something new.

Within seconds the splicer was absorbed into Mercer, and he relished at the wave of fresh biomass that passed through his system. A moment later Blacklight recoiled as it hit something different, something _alien_, that had corrupted this splicer's DNA to the point of rendering him almost not human. The virus prodded at the new material, and it prodded back. Falling back on instinct, Blacklight swarmed in and annihilated the junk DNA, breaking down the useful materials and repurposing them for other things.

The memories hit a moment later.

_Rapture Web of Intrigue_: Glen Kreutzer

_"Oy, you 'ear that?" A twisted voice called out._

_"Sounds like some sort of 'splosion. Don' see anythin' goin up in flames outside." Glen replied._

_"Of course not ya fockin twit, there's nothin but ocean out there."_

_Glen gave a half snarl half growl at the offending voice, before he turned his rather blurry gaze outside, and noticed the approaching bathysphere._

_"Well well well, looks like we got a new fish to fry!"_

Mercer pulled himself out of the memory of the dead splicer. The memories were twisted, corrupted somewhat, and that was the only clear thing he could pull from the splicer's ravaged mind. Putting them off for later, he was about to turn and look for a path to continue on when he noticed a blue glint in the dead splicer's pockets. Intrigued, he leaned down and tugged it out, revealing it to be a comically oversized hypodermic needle. On one of the metal ribs was the word EVE.

"Huh, wonder what this is. Hey Atlas?"

_"You call?"_ came the Irishman's reply.

"Yeah. Killed a few splicers after I went out of view, and on one of them I found this hypo full of blue liquid with the label EVE on it. Any hints?"

_"Oh those. That my friend is an EVE Hypo. It allows you to immediately replenish your EVE reserves when you run dry from plasmid use. Think of it as ammunition for the plasmids. Speaking of which, there's a Gatherer's Garden nearby. Go check it out and see if it has anything for you would you kindly?"_

_-And there it is again.-_ Cross said.

-_I noticed, and I wonder how long he's gonna keep doing that before he realizes its not working.-_

Cross gave a grunt of affirmation before saying, _-Well, if anything, maybe there's something useful up near this 'Gatherer's Garden.'-_

Mercer proceeded to leap up to the balcony, coming down with a heavy thud and a worrying creak from the wood. In front of him was his destination, and Mercer noted that, like everything else he's seen so far, it had seen better days.

Proving that some of Rapture's machines were made of sterner stuff than everything else, a recording of a little girl advertising several plasmids and enhancements began playing from the machine.

As he approached he saw that due to the damage, one of the wares of the Gatherer's Garden was already up for grabs, in the form of a rather large bottle full of red liquid. Examining the bottle yielded a name for the contents.

_Electrobolt Mk1. 64Fl oz refined ADAM plasmid. Instructions for use: Fill supplied hypodermic needle, and inject the contents into a vein either on your arm, or on your leg. Note: Ryan Industries does not take responsibility for any injuries inflicted from installing the plasmid or its use._

_-Well? What do you think?-_

_-I think you're fucking insane if you intend on sticking that shit inside you, but what do I know? Im just the disembodied voice stuck inside an insane virus' head.-_

Mercer couldn't help but snicker at this, before returning to the issue, and plasmid at hand. Knowing that this could either be one of the best or worst decisions he has ever made, Mercer loaded up the hypo with the contents of the bottle, before picking out the vein on his left arm and slamming the needle home.

* * *

Sorry about the delay folks, i was meaning to post this a week after i had posted the first chapter, but yeah we can see how that worked out. FYI Chapter's 3 and 4 are both more or less complete, and i'll post those sometime within the next week. After that i get to work on churning out Medical Pavilion chapters, and if all goes well i'll have Medical done by the end of March. As always, review, keep the flames to a minimum (else i'll have an Incinerate!-amped Mercer come eat you), and I'll churn these out as fast as i can.

Oh, and if someone could whip up a cover for this story, that'd be swell

And as for those waiting for ToTT, i'll do what i can, but writing for it is so much harder vs Protoshock. In order to get everything for it correct i have to re-read all 4 books, and that's a huge number of words to churn through, and thats on top of the fact each frickin chapter has a minimum word count of 8k words. I will continue working on it, but updates will be sporadic at best.


	3. Fist Full of Lightning

Chapter 3: Fist full of lightning

_Pain._

Sheer, total, mind consuming _agony_ raced through his body as soon as the contents of the hypo hit Mercer's biomass. He thought getting infested with the Parasite was bad. He thought taking a thermobaric shell to the face was bad. Not even the pain of getting hit by a 300 kiloton nuke could compare to now as electrified ADAM raced through his system adding a whole new set of DNA for Blacklight to feast on and assimilate.

Mercer let loose a roar of pain as lightning began arcing from his body to everything and anything metal, and in his pain he barely heard Atlas speak through the radio.

_"Steady now, your genetic code is being re-written- Just hold on and everything will be fine."_

A massive bolt of lighting lashed out at the Gatherer's Garden, drilling through to the inner workings before blowing the entire machine to hell. More arcs of electricity shot out, stabbing at light fixtures and the nearby neon signs, blowing out the entire local power grid in their fury. Mercer continued to backpedal as Blacklight and ADAM waged war within his body, and he never saw the banister behind him until he pitched backwards over it onto the floor.

The fall, coupled with the trauma of getting Blacklight forcibly re-written, knocked him out cold, causing his body to instinctively curl up in a ball while the ADAM finished its work. Even so, while Mercer's mind shut down, Cross, having not been affected even the slightest by his host's stupidity, could still see out of Mercer's half open eyes.

Maybe a minute after Zeus had knocked himself out, he heard a pair of footsteps approach, their owners turning out to be a pair of thuggish splicers, each one wearing a bloody bunny mask.

One of them leaned down to examine Zeus' body, and even with the mask, Cross thought it was one _ugly_ motherfucker.

**"This little fish looks like he just had his cherry popped! Wonder if he's still got some Adam on him?"** His voice was raspy, just like the spider splicer they had seen earlier, but it also carried a warped undertone to it.

The splicer began searching Mercer's body for anything useful, and Cross cursed his inability to do anything. The other one, standing about ten feet away, glanced around the room, noting the damage done with Mercer's 'cherry popping.' **"Bloody hell, look at the mess this little fish made. **_**Very **_**nasty reaction to his first plasmid methinks."**

The one still scavenging Mercer snarled almost ferally at the second one. **"Shut it! We don't need to be bringing more attention to us as it is."**

The second splicer was about to snap back when a deep baleful moaning sounded throughout the area, and both immediately went on alert.

**"You hear that? Lets bug!"**

**"WEAK! You're a weak chopper!"** The second one hissed, already on to the next room.

**"This little fish ain't worth toeing it with no Big Daddy!"**

**"Yellow! Always have been!" **The first splicer crouched down before rasping at Alex, **"You'll be no better off with the metal daddy, little fish. See you floating in the briney..."** With that, the first one dashed off after his partner, supposedly to smash the latter's skull in with the pipe it was carrying for running away.

Cross was worried now. Whatever this Big Daddy was, it was enough to make the splicer's scramble to get the hell away from it. Not good, in otherwords.

His answer as to what a Big Daddy was came with boneshaking steps. For one, the damn thing was huge. Easily standing ten feet tall, this thing could give a D-Code a run for its money in sheer bulk. It was clad from head to foot in some sort of diving suit, thickly armored, and with its right hand replaced with a massive drill. The portholes in its helmet glowed a ghostly yellow color, for what purpose Cross couldn't say.

Much to his surprise, what looked like a little girl was following the metal titan. Little girl was quickly revised to "If I had a body and grenade launcher I'd shoot first ask questions later" when he saw the eyes and skin, the former of which were glowing a brilliant yellow-orange color and the latter tinged green. Whatever this thing was, it merely carried the shell of a little girl.

Revulsion washed through his consciousness as she started speaking, her voice carrying the same warped undertones as the Splicers earlier.

**"Look Mr. Bubbles, its an angel! I can see light coming from his belly... Wait a minute. He's still breathing."** The Big Daddy immediately gave a menacing growl. **"Its alright, I know he'll be an angel soon.**"

The little... _thing_, walked off, with its metal guardian following, the ground quaking beneath its steps. After several minutes the Big Daddie's groans could no longer be heard. It was at this time Mercer finally woke up.

"Ugh, my head."

_-Well its about fucking time you woke up. While you were power napping, 2 splicers tried and failed to loot you, before what they called a Big Daddy and its companion were going to do something to your supposed corpse.-_

_-Did you do anything?-_ Mercer asked.

-_What the fuck do you think? Just because I'm stuck in here doesn't mean I can take control when your mind goes on a vacation.-_

Mercer rolled his eyes at Cross' remark. At least it confirmed that the former Blackwatch officer couldn't go full dirtbag mode and hijack him at an inopportune moment.

"_Hey, still alive down there?"_ Atlas called through the radio.

Mercer clicked the device on and replied, "Yes, but you could have given some warning about that. It hurt like hell."

"_First time plasmid's tend to be a kick from a mule. If you get any more, and you probably will sooner or later, they won't hurt as bad. And, heh, there's nothing quite like a fist full of lightning now is there?"_

Mercer raised an eyebrow at this comment before realizing Atlas must have been talking about the plasmid that just put him through hell in a handbasket. Glancing down at his hands, he dug through his powers until he found the Electrobolt plasmid, sitting happy as a clam amongst his other abilities. Seeing no other option for the moment, he triggered it.

Lighting almost immediately began buzzing through his hands, and for a moment he reveled in the fact he could now wield electricity as easily as he would biomass.

Seeing the nearby shorted out switch, Mercer flexed his hand in the general direction of it. A flash of light and crack of electricity later, the switch engaged the door mechanism, allowing Mercer access to the tunnel beyond.

As he passed into the tunnel, he glanced outside and noticed that there was an awful lot of debris from the crash coming down. And if the debris was coming down...

-_RUN!-_

The tunnel shook violently as the tail end of the airplane smashed through a nearby building, screaming directly for him. Mercer took off like a bat out of hell just as the tail slammed home, plowing through the glass and metal of the tunnel as if it were tissue paper.

A torrent of seawater began flooding the tunnel, and Mercer let loose a yelp as the water began splashing against him, both from the main breach and from the hundreds of cracks now appearing in the glass. Nearby tunnels, weakened from years of neglect, imploded on themselves, and as he passed it one of the doors in the tunnel began to bulge and deform from the water pressure.

The door ahead neatly slid open, and Alex dashed in just as the tunnel failed entirely, sending a titanic wall of water racing through it, only to slam against the door as some sort of emergency feature of the city kicked in to prevent flooding.

The door held for several seconds before a jet of water burst from a seam, and the metal began to groan under the strain.

"Uhh, Atlas, I do _not_ like water, so if you could get the other door open that'd be swell."

"_Give me a minute, the anti-flooding lockdown protocol has gone into effect and I need to override it. You should check the room for anything useful while I do so."_

Seeing as he had nothing better to do while the water slowly flooded the room from the failing door, Mercer began looking around, finding and pocketing several EVE hypos and health packs. While he could just grab the nearest splicer and wolf it down for health, Blacklight didn't exactly like dealing with used ADAM, and thus he took 2 of the packs just in case.

He was rifling through the pockets of a long dead corpse when the other door opened up and a loud scraping sound sounded throughout the room. Mercer shifted to his Claws, forgoing the plasmid for something he could rely on against squishy targets.

"_Splicer! Use whatever the hell it was you used against the other splicers before the damn door closes again! I can't hold it open forever."_

Alex ignored Atlas and slowly moved forward, turning on Thermal Vision so he could see the Splicer standing in the middle of the room.

"**Oy! Where are you little fish? Me and you has some unfinished business! Now why don't you come out real nice like so I can kill you?"**

Mercer downshifted his voice an octave before answering. **"Gladly."**

Before the poor bastard even knew what was going on, a stream of biomass drilled through the floor beneath him, spearing him on a spike eight feet high and going up damn near into the roof. The splicer gave a single gargle before going still, and Mercer retracted the groundspike, letting the corpse fall into the rapidly increasing water with two distinct splashes.

He turned around and saw another splicer standing in the doorway, this one wielding a pistol, who had turned white from Mercer's rather spectacular kill. Before he ever had a chance to snap out of it, a whipfist flashed out and split him in half from head to groin, spraying blood everywhere. "Dumbass," Mercer muttered to the split corpse as he walked by and up the stairs.

He made it to the top of the stairs just in time to see an elevator burst into flames and fall down to the ground, the poor man inside screaming the entire way down. As it hit, a burning splicer burst from the door in front of Mercer, who simply smashed a fist into its face, sending the now burning corpse flying back.

"_Listen,"_ Atlas called. _"I've got a family. I need to get them out of here, but the damn splicers have cut me off from them. If you can reach them in Neptune's Bounty, then maybe, just maybe I can get them to saftey."_ Atlas sighed. _"I know you must feel like the unluckiest man in the world right now, but you're the only hope I have of seeing my wife and child again. Go to Neptune's Bounty, find my family... please."_

Cross did the mental equivalent of an eyeroll. -_That's a mighty nice act he's putting on don't you think?-_

Mercer found himself agreeing with him. _-Well if it turns out he's trying to screw us over, I'll be sure to 'play' with him before I kill him.-_

_-Didn't your mother ever tell you to not play with your food?-_

_-Fuck you Cross.-_

The disembodied man merely snickered.

Glancing up he saw that there was a balcony about fifty feet up and another one an additional fifty feet or so. Gathering biomass in his legs, Mercer crouched, then leaped straight up. The splicer in the first balcony had maybe a second to register Mercer's presence before the virus jumped again up to the second balcony.

As soon as he landed he registered a voice speaking, singing almost, nearby. The voice turned out to be yet another splicer, this one a woman, who was now ranting openly to a baby carriage. A groundspike later, and the woman was a pile of cooling meat on the ground. Ignoring the revolver in the carriage (_-Seriously, who get's so far gone they think a _pistol_ of all things is their child?-_), Mercer strolled into the next area, a place called 'Kashmir Restaurant'.

"_Plasmids changed everything."_ Atlas said darkly. _"They destroyed our bodies, and our minds. We couldn't handle it. Best friends would butcher each other, mothers strangling their children in their cribs. The whole damn city went to hell."_

"Well, at least we know what happened... and if the signs in here are correct, a general time period." Mercer said to himself.

The restaurant looked like a war had been fought in it. Chunks of the walls, floor and ceiling were missing, gouged out by various weapons and what were probably plasmids. A massive gap in the banister nearby showed where an explosion went off, and if the dried blood nearby was any indication, took a fair number of people with it.

Mercer turned to go down the stairs, and saw a thuggish splicer standing in front of a door, arguing with a woman who was on the other side.

Feeling slightly hungry, Mercer carefully walked up behind the man before driving his blade through the man's gut and into the steel of the door. Letting the tendrils do their work, the virus rapidly assimilated his latest meal, and finding nothing of note in its memories, salvaged what useful materials he could from the body.

"**Charlie? CHARLIE! Where've you gone?!"**

"Charlie? He won't be coming around anymore." Mercer said, before charging at the woman and driving his blade through her skull with a dull crunch of breaking bone. As the dying splicer's body twitched, a vial full of a red fluid in her pocket fell out and clattered against the floor. Seeing it, Alex picked it up. _-If these memories are anything to go by, that's ADAM and as far as anyone down here is concerned its worth its weight in gold. Keep it for now.-_ Seeing as he had no other choice, Mercer stuffed the vial into one of his 'pockets' before moving back into the main room.

As he did so he noticed what looked like three or so splicers wandering around in the partially flooded area, and an idea popped into his head. Switching out to the electrobolt plasmid, he aimed for the water and let fly the energy bolt. All three splicers promptly froze as thousands of volts of electricity, conducted by the water to their squishy bodies, tore their nervous systems apart.

Moving forward to loot the corpses of anything useful, Alex saw what looked like an old tape recorder on a table, and on a whim, started playing it.

"_Another New Year's, another night alone. I'm out, and you're stuck in Hephaestus, working.*Sigh* Imagine my suprise. I guess I'll just have another drink... Here's a toast to Diane McClintock, silliest girl in Rapture. Silly enough to fall in love with Andrew Ryan."_ Fireworks sounded from the device, quickly evolving into screams and what sounds like gunfire, just before the recorder went silent. -_Well, at least we know how this place got tore apart.- _Cross said drly.

Mercer frowned, rewinding and playing the recording again. Listening carefully to the screams he heard several male voices in the background shouting in anger, and were likely the instigators of the attack. The question was now: why did they attack?

Seeing as the recorder wasn't going to give up much more in the way of responses, Mercer returned to the upper floor, punishing a female splicer for her trouble. Wondering where to go next, he shifted his eyesight to Infected vision, and immediately saw what looked like a sinuous greenish haze trailing onto the Men's restroom. Further following it, it led to a large hole in the wall between it and what looked like a theatre.

As he entered the room, Atlas came back on the radio. _"Careful now... would you kindly lower that weapon for a minute?"_ Mercer rolled his eyes at the attempt to get him to comply with a command before shifting his biomass back into the default state.

As he slowly walked across the girder splitting the upper level in two, he looked down and saw what looked like a little girl doing _something_ to a corpse with a _very_ large needle.

"_You think that's a child down there? Don't be fooled. She's a Little Sister now. Somebody went and turned a sweet little girl into a monster. Whatever you thought about right and wrong on the surface, well that don't count for much down here in Rapture. Those Little Sisters, they carry Adam, the genetic material that keeps the wheels of Rapture turning. Everybody wants it, everybody needs it."_

_-Christ, and just when I thought I'd seen the worst of what the world has to offer, this city one ups that. I think I'm going to be sick.-_

Mercer had to agree. He may have been one fucked up individual, but there were extremes even the virus would not go to. Turning a girl into an Adam factory was one of those extremes.

Making his way down to the floor below, Mercer watched in slight disgust as the girl, now finished draining the Adam out of the corpse, stood up and proceeded to consume the contents of the needle. As she was drinking the Adam rich blood, a splicer armed with a pistol walked in through the nearby door. Greed filled his warped visage as he realized the Big Daddy was nowhere nearby, and he began approaching the Little Sister. Before he could aim the pistol and fire a killing shot, the little girl _screamed_.

* * *

FEED ME REVIEWS! Next chapter will be up in 1 week's time, and then after that it'll be some time before the Medical Pavilion comes up.

And another thing, i want someone to cook up a cover for this story for me. Make a good enough one and i'll dedicate a chapter to you.


	4. The King of Rapture

Chapter 4 Of Big Daddies, Splicers, and Andrew Ryan.

_Before he could aim the pistol and fire a killing shot, the little girl _screamed_._

The splicer immediately pistolwhipped the little girl to try and silence her. That turned out to be a big fucking mistake.

A wallshaking roar of rage filled the room, and Mercer got his first look at a _VERY_ pissed off Big Daddy.

The splicer leveled its pistol at the Big Daddy and opened up, each shot scoring direct hits on the tin titan's thick metal carapace, barely leaving scratches in the armor. A loud click signaled an empty chamber, causing the doomed splicer to start backpedaling from the approaching metal monster, even has he tried to reload his pistol.

The Big Daddy wouldn't have it, and backhanded the splicer with the Drill on its right arm into the wall hard enough to send out a spiderweb of cracks in the concrete. The drill spun up, and the Splicer's screams of pain quickly became gurgles as the instrument of destruction swiftly made mincemeat out of the poor bastard, spraying blood and offal everywhere. Not content that the splicer was dead, the Big Daddy proceeded to pick up and start smashing its prey around the room, each impact punctuated by another gurgle from the dying splicer and a crunch of shattering wood, stone and bone.

Mercer grinned ferally as he watched another two splicer's enter the room only to fall victim to the Enraged Big Daddie's wrath, the leviathan swiftly tearing them apart in bloody gouts of gore. He was looking forward to fighting these things.

The metal titan made short work of the remaining splicers, smashing one of them through the thick glass near Mercer, before it picked up the Little Sister and walked out of the room.

"_That's the Big Daddy. She gathers Adam, he keeps her safe."_

"No fucking shit," Mercer breathed. He was definitely looking forward to fighting one of them.

Mercer proceeded on through the halls, punishing the few splicers that were stupid enough to attack him, one getting a gut full of Musclemass, while two others fell victim to Electrobolt. After descending several flights of stairs that had been turned into an impromptu waterfall from leaking water, Mercer stood a short distance from the entrance to Neptune's Bounty. Seeing no other way out, the virus began walking towards the door. He made it halfway there when a grating slammed down in front of him, punctuated by alarms going off.

"_Security Alert in progress."_

"Oh hell," Mercer muttered, before he noticed several splicers speeding towards him on the upper floor. "Oh, well in that case," Claws erupted from both arms in a flurry of tendrils. "I'm game."

The first victim leapt towards him, swinging his pipe and screaming like the devil himself was torturing the splicer. Said splicer abruptly found himself falling apart in several large chunks as Mercer's claws ripped him apart. The second splicer, this one armed with a gun, held back and began taking potshots at him.

"Oh we can't have that now can we?!" Mercer roared at the Leadhead, before sending out a bolt of lightning followed up by a whipfist. The splicer's skull promptly exploded meeting the bladed end of the fist, the corpse toppling backwards into the feet of several more splicers coming towards him. Two of the splicers promptly went berserk at seeing their dead comrade, only to fall victim to more well placed electrobolt and whipfist combo attacks.

This barely slowed the tide of splicers, causing Mercer to curse as several more bullets slammed into him. That was when he got inspiration for a new ability, combining his Blacklight given powers with the Electrobolt plasmid.

Mercer focused his abilities, ignoring the bullets that slammed into his flesh as he fought to bring two opposites together. His efforts were rewarded when his Whipfist began crackling with lightning.

_-Oh I like that. What are you gonna name it?-_

_-I think the name 'Thunder Whip' will work nicely.-_ With that, Alex sent the newly christened Thunder Whip racing for its first victim.

The result was exactly what Mercer was looking for. As soon as the bladed tip of the whipfist embedded itself in the leadhead's chest, a surge of electricity exploded outward, killing the target and stunning the splicers around it. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, Mercer flooded the splicer's corpse with electricity before swinging it at the now recovering leadheads with all the force and grace of a semi.

The resulting explosion painted the walls with burning chunks of meat, and Mercer chuckled. _-That was actually kinda fun.-_

_-Only you could think that wholesome slaughter is fun. Now kill the second wave of splicers that just walked in through the hole you made.-_

Mercer grinned before leaping up onto the ledge that was now littered with corpses before switching to Claws. He was pleased to note that the still active Electrobolt plasmid had now energized his Claws, turning them into Tesla Claws. Eager to test this new tool of destruction against the mass of fleshy bodies streaming towards him, Mercer charged into the fray, with flashes of electricity, glowing claw and flying arcs of blood marking his passage.

"_Oh christ its Ryan! Goddamn Andrew Ryan!"_ Atlas roared through the radio. _"Bastard found us! Damnit! He's shut off all access to Neptune... Fuck!"_

Another explosion rocked the area as more splicers began flooding in, each one howling for their pound of flesh, and Mercer all too willing to carve that pound of flesh out and force-feed it back to them. Blood and gore began flying as Mercer started streaking through the seething mass of ADAM enhanced flesh, each strike a kill, with no movement wasted, only pausing to reload on EVE before plunging back into the fray.

_-Ok I don't know about you but in this situation I'd make a run for it.-_ Cross said.

_-Alright then, lets see what happens when a devastator meets plasmid.-_ Mercer felt Cross pale slightly at that.

Mercer retracted his claws, pulling in all needed biomass as both electrified Adam and seething Blacklight began to build up.

The splicers leered at the virus, thinking that he was worn out and now easy prey. **"Aww, the little fish is all out of juice. Lets see if he's got anything **_**tasty**_** on him!"**

Mercer grinned, even as pressure inside his biomass built to critical levels, far higher than normal, causing the splicers to pause. "You want something to eat? How's this?" With that, the enhanced Devastator exploded outwards.

Thousands of electrified tendrils shrieked outwards, joined by massive bolts of lightning as _everything_ within thirty meters was electrified, impaled, and ripped to pieces in a colossus of utter _devastation_ that put everything Mercer had done up to this point to shame. Glass shattered, stone disintegrated, Electrical systems fried, and anything flammable burned as megavolts of electricity howled through them. Lightning began buzzing angrily through the mass of tendrils, before a shockwave of energy raced outward, stunning what few survivors there were before the first wave of tendrils split into yet more crackling streamers of doom, turning the survivors into so much mincemeat.

The web of energized biomass retracted, and Mercer _staggered_ at the loss of biomass and Eve. That Thunder Barrage had taken a huge chunk out of him, but, as he looked around, the results were unquestionable. _Everything_ that had been attacking him was gone, most reduced to steaming piles of gore, gently buzzing with residual electricity.

_-Goddamn. You don't half ass anything do you?-_ Mercer just chuckled at this.

"_We need to get you to Neptune's Bounty, and the only way to do that is to go through Medical."_ Atlas shouted, oblivious to the carnage just unleashed. _"The bulkhead to it should be opposite of the one to Neptune's Bounty. Now go! I can only do so much to hold Ryan off from here."_

Mercer didn't need asking twice, and bolted down the corridor, and before long he was in the room just before the bulkhead.

As soon as he attempted to move across the threshold and into the Medical Pavilion, three things happened:

One: The door slammed shut.

Two: Gratings blocked his path backwards, trapping him in

Three: All of the lights went out.

"Oh boy," Mercer muttered.

The room suddenly blazed with sterile light, coming from a massive CRT behind a thick pane of reinforced glass opposite of the bulkhead door.

"_So tell me, _friend_... Which one of the bitches sent you? The KGB wolf? Or the CIA jackal?"_

Mercer raised an eyebrow at the massive visage of Ryan on the TV screen. "Neither actually. Me and the United States government don't exactly get along (_-Thats the understatement of the century-_), and you couldn't pay me to go to Russia. Name's Mercer, by the way."

Ryan snorted in amusement. _"So, we have ourselves a funny man, hmm? Well here's the news, Mister Mercer: Rapture isn't a sunken ship for you to plunder, and I am not a giddy socialite to be slapped around by government muscle. In the unlikely event you are from neither of them, a word of advice: Do not _fuck_ with me, or else you will get more than just splicers and other hoodlums. And with that, farewell, or dasvadinya. Whichever you prefer."_

The screen went blank, punctuated by the screams of hundreds of splicers, but Ryan wasn't done yet. _"Oh, and one more thing, traveler: I _will_ find out how your rather interesting abilities work, one way or another."_

The mass of splicers by now were pounding away at the glass, which, while sufficient against one or two normal people, was rapidly withering under the strain of five splicers smashing their weapons against the glass.

"Well, Mister Ryan, how's a demonstration?" Mercer snarled.

"_A demonstration? Please, do go on,"_ Ryan called through the radio. _"This should provide some better entertainment over the usual rabble."_

"_WHAT THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU DOING?"_ Atlas roared, but Mercer ignored him, checking his remaining critical biomass and Eve reserves.

The splicers smashed their way through the glass and began flooding into the room, only to find an armored, electrified ebony titan of death, blade in one arm, shield in the other, and growling deeper than a pissed off Big Daddy. The mob hung back, glancing at each other as to who would tango first with the virus, which eventually ended up being a thuggish splicer wielding a pipe. Said splicer charged forward and brought his pipe down on Blacklight's armored skull, only to be swiftly punished with a surge of lightning, the energy blowing its arm off.

Before the splicer could even begin to contemplate his sudden lack of a limb, Mercer divested him of his remaining limbs in an eyeblink before bisecting his head and torso, spraying the other splicers with blood.

It was as if a dam broke, and the mob surged forward, eager to get sucked up and chewed apart by the whirling vortex of death.

Mercer showed no mercy, dispatching splicers by the bladeful while pasting any who were dumb enough to get to close to the shield. The room was swiftly painted red in splicer gore, but the damn things still kept coming, and the constant attacks were taking a toll on him. With a roar, he began charging up for another Devastator, this time the Groundspike Graveyard.

_-What are you doing?-_

_-I'm going to take this building down that's what.-_

Mercer slammed his fists down into the deck, and with a groundshaking roar several tons of biomass screamed their way through the structure of the building before erupting in lightning covered spikes, shredding splicers as well as several critical support structures within the building.

The biomass retracted, and for a moment everything was deathly still. Then it happened. A terrifying groan of the tower's superstructure. The weight of the water above had found a weakness, and it was going to exploit it.

Cracks began racing through the windows and walls outside, admitting high pressure jets of water that further eroded and weakened the structure. Far down near the base of the building, where thick steel pylons connected it to the bedrock of the sea floor, the concrete core of the building, weakened from years of neglect, exposure to seawater, and holding up the massive amount of weight, finally gave way, and the tower began imploding on itself.

With a scraping sound the bulkhead slid open, and Mercer dashed through just as the water reached the room he so thoroughly ravaged.

-Protoshock-

Ryan watched impassively on the display as the Welcoming Tower, a building that had stood since Rapture's foundation, came crashing down, sending clouds of dust and debris floating in between the other structures that made up Rapture.

This newcomer, this 'Mercer', was an infinitely dangerous individual. He had the eyes of a predator and the gait of a monster. He smirked slightly to himself before pouring three fingers of whiskey. The days ahead would be _very_ interesting.

* * *

Alrighty, and there we have Mercer being his usual dickish self apon entering rapture. Now, here's how this is going to work out: I am going to write each section of the story (like the previous 4 chapters), and then once that section has been completed I will post them one at a time roughly every weekend after finishing that segment. That being said, chapter 5 is already almost done, and depending on how things work out i'll start posting the next segment within the next month or two.

Now, i want to point out something one of the reviewers said: "This feels like its going to become an 'Anything the player can do mercer can do it better.'" Or something to that nature. For now, this is what its going to be, with some diverging here and there. After the Smuggler's Hideout segment, things will begin to diverge, with the real goodies coming after Mercer and Ryan meet face to face. Im sorry if the story feels a little bland, but i'm still a bit of a rookie writer and thus you'll just have to bear with me.

If it makes anything better, the Alex vs Fontaine fight will be spectacular.


End file.
